Once and other winners at the Tony Awards

News about the yearly winners is not as widely anticipated out here like the Academy Awards or the Grammys. But local interest in the Tony Awards is certainly growing. Take note that for the first time, we were able to watch the telecast of this year’s Tonys live on Velvet last June 11, Monday morning.

This is progress that theater buffs are happy about. If I remember right the only time in the recent past when everybody watched many days or even months late telecast of the Tony Awards was when Lea Salonga won for Best Actress in a Musical for her work in Miss Saigon. Not anymore.

This year’s edition was an entertaining show with Neil Patrick Harris as host and appearances by Hugh Jackman, the cast of the revival of Porgy And Bess, Christopher Plummer and Sylvia la Torre’s granddaughter Anna Maria Perez de Tagle singing and dancing with the kids of Godspell, which stars Corbin Bleu of High School Musical. And everything was made all the more special because of the Best Musical winner Once. Now that was a truly inspiring triumph of the underdog.

The current Broadway sensation Once was based on the motion picture of the same title, which figured in another underdog victory in the 2007 Oscars. Once is an Irish film made for only $160,000 that stars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. It is the love story of street musicians, a boy named Guy and a girl, called simply Girl. They meet and serious Guy and kooky Girl end up writing and singing songs together about life and each other.

Hansard and Irglova are real-life songwriting partners. They wrote original songs for the movie and these, plus several new works, ended up being used in the musical. One of these compositions titled Falling Slowly earned the duo its ticket to Broadway. It was a simple love song performed with an acoustic arrangement in the soundtrack that was nominated at the Grammys. But it turned out to be so affecting that it was nominated for Best Song in the 2007 Academy Awards.

That year was a big one for the Disney live-action musical Enchanted starring Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey and Susan Sarandon. Three songs from the movie were also nominated, Happy Working Song, So Close and That’s How You Know, all written by music legends Alan Menken of Little Mermaid, The Lion King and Stephen Schwartz of Godspell. The other nominee was Raise It Up, a pretty tune from August Rush.

I thought then that Falling Slowly from a small film that we had not heard of did not stand a chance of winning. It was up against Disney and songs from Disney films, from Chim Chim Cheree of Mary Poppins to Beauty and the Beast were perennial Oscar favorites. But the Academy members obviously fell for Falling Slowly. It won the Best Song trophy and I was glad to find out when the Tony nominations were announced that it has gone to Broadway. Not only that, the musical brought home the lion’s share of this year’s Tonys in the musical category.

Out of 11 nominations, Once was named Best Musical. It also won for Best Orchestration; Sound Design; Direction by John Tiffany; Scenic Design; Lighting Design; and Best Performance by an Actor in the Leading Role, Steve Kazee who played Guy. Cristin Milioti, who played Girl was also nominated but lost to Audra McDonald of Gershwin’s Porgy And Bess.

Coincidentally, Once’s chief rival at the Tonys was another Disney musical, Newsies. This was also based on a movie, The News Boys, that starred the young Christian Bale and which laid an egg at the box-office. Newsies did not do so bad either. It won for Choreography; Book of a Musical; and Original Score. Considering that it came from a flop, it can also be said that Newsies is also a triumph of the underdog.

And now comes the question. Do we have to go to New York to watch Once or Newsies? I hope that the local theater groups will decide to stage their own production of these winners. Maybe one of them will even attempt the classic Porgy And Bess whose reviews have described as truly beautiful in this new reimagined version.